We would like to suggest a few pieces of tactical advice for Bombay. Nothing that will ensure you a wonderful victory because such a thing would unbalance the game–and nothing that will strip you of the pleasure of discovering things by yourself.
1) Building palaces to accumulate money (when opponents pass trough these palaces) is more profitable if you build them at the beginning of the game. What is more, the more opponents you have, the more interesting it is. In a 5-players game, choosing the option « all roads lead to my palaces » may make you really rich.
2) You’d better not follow and imitate an opponent. First because he will take the silk cubes from trading posts before you and may not leave anything behind. Then and above all because he will sell his cubes in the good cities, decreasing the value of similar cubes. After him, you’re fated to do a mediocre sale.
3) Pay attention to the opponents heading toward a trading post of the same color as the one you are going toward (or the one where you already are). Indeed, silk cubes are limited in the markets. You’d better be the one who deprives an opponent of the last cube of a given color than the one who moved in vain and has nothing left to buy.
4) In general, do not build any palace with a yellow or a purple silk cube. These two rare colors bring bonuses when selling in the cities, so you should prefer other colors to invest in a palace.
5) The palace tokens that allow to take a silk cube in the market the farthest to the left as possible are sometimes very advantageous: when the left-hand market is empty (and ideally the central market too), you can use a cheap silk cube to get a high value cube in the central market (or the right-hand market) along with the palace.
Enjoy!